What happens when someone repeatedly loses control over their own body? How can pleasure become a path to healing and reclaiming bodily autonomy?
In her book Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown explores how marginalized communities often disconnect from their physical sensations as a survival mechanism. She offers a transformative approach to reconnecting with your body through pleasure, mindfulness, and somatic practices.
Keep reading to discover practical techniques for developing a deeper relationship with your physical self and challenging the systems that profit from body shame.
Reconnect With Your Body
brown presents pleasure activism as an avenue to reconnect with your body. She writes that, when someone’s right to control their own body is repeatedly violated, they may learn to tune out physical feelings as a way to cope with that violation. This disconnection from bodily sensation is especially common among people from marginalized communities, who—through systemic oppression—are more likely to face experiences that deny them control over their bodies. For example, if a medical provider repeatedly dismisses or invalidates a patient’s symptoms, that patient may begin to doubt their own physical experiences—questioning whether their pain, fatigue, or hunger is “real.”
(Shortform note: This pattern of disconnection directly impacts interoceptive awareness—our ability to sense internal bodily signals—and embodiment—our sense of being present in our physical self. While people naturally vary in their capacity for bodily awareness, Western culture’s emphasis on mental over physical experiences can further reinforce this disconnection, particularly for those already struggling with physical or sexual trauma.)
Pleasure activism offers an alternative path to reconnect with your body and reclaim your bodily autonomy by encouraging you to pay attention to what genuinely nourishes and energizes you rather than following external rules about how you should feel or what you should want.
(Shortform note: When thinking about what nourishes you, consider both the short-term and long-term. Some activities might provide immediate comfort or pleasure but deplete you over time, while others may require initial effort but build more lasting satisfaction. The key is to find a balance between immediate wellbeing and sustainable growth. For example, scrolling social media might offer quick entertainment, but engaging in a creative hobby or meaningful conversation could provide deeper, more enduring nourishment.)
According to brown, reconnecting with your body has broader implications for social justice. As Sonya Renee Taylor argues in The Body Is Not an Apology, injustice often stems from people’s inability to accept and love their and others’ bodies. Taylor explains that when people reject their own bodies, they often project their shame onto others, perpetuating discriminatory attitudes and behaviors. This exacerbates people’s insecurities, which media and advertising industries capitalize on through shame-based marketing campaigns. Through this lens, embracing bodily pleasure is an act of resistance against the interconnected systems of oppression that perpetuate and profit from body shame.
(Shortform note: Jessi Kneeland’s Body Neutral builds on Renee Taylor’s ideas in The Body Is Not an Apology by pushing the conversation about body image further. While Taylor encourages embracing our bodies through radical self-love and rejecting societal shame, Kneeland argues that we shouldn’t judge bodies as good or bad at all. She argues that simply avoiding negative judgments isn’t enough—our goal should be to avoid all judgments. Instead of trying to shift or expand beauty standards, Kneeland advocates viewing bodies as neutral, not objects that need to meet any kind of standard.)
brown also recommends somatic practices, which help you integrate your body and mind through mindful movement, breathwork, and focused attention to subtle physical sensations such as muscle tension, temperature changes, and weight distribution. The goal of somatic work is to develop heightened awareness of how you experience your body from the inside out. By consciously attending to physical sensations, somatics helps you become more aware of your body’s signals and responses. This awareness can help reveal where trauma is stored in the body and build your capacity to stay present with discomfort.
| How to Do Somatic Work at Home Though many psychologists recommend initially learning somatic techniques under professional guidance, you can explore some basic practices at home: 1. Grounding exercises anchor you to the present moment during anxiety or flashbacks. Try running water over your hands while focusing on temperature and sensation. 2. Resourcing and visualization involves creating a mental sanctuary. Recall a peaceful memory or imagine a scene that’s calming for you, engaging all your senses. 3. Self-regulation techniques help manage stress responses. Try the butterfly hug: Cross your arms over your chest with hands on opposite shoulders until you feel safe. 4. Body scans promote relaxation through meditation. Starting at your feet, move your attention upward, observing and releasing tension in each area of your body. |
brown says that, as you do somatic work, you might also notice that your body responds to stress and trauma in ways that are common to many people. For example, your breath might become shallow or your shoulders might tense up. Understanding these shared patterns can be validating—it helps you realize you’re not alone in how your body responds to certain situations, even across different backgrounds and cultures.
(Shortform note: Common stress responses can emerge not only from our direct experiences but also from inherited patterns. For example, if your grandmother used to hold tension in her shoulders when she was stressed, you might, too. Research on generational trauma shows that some physiological reactions to stress can be remarkably similar across generations, even in people who never experienced the original trauma. For example, studies found the descendants of Holocaust survivors share a biological stress response with their ancestors, showing how these bodily patterns can be transmitted across time and family lines.)
